fetish and household cleaning products

Some thoughts on fetish and household cleaning products…

It is time to clean the cock. Like a good femme housewife, I add this to my list of chores while my husband is at work. Buy milk, mop the floors, wash the linens, boil the dildo. “Gotta have the right tools for the right job,” I hear the voice of my father say, and I go to the kitchen to collect my supplies.

A pot, some tongs, my gloves, my apron. I tie the strings of my floral and lace apron (this “tool” is mostly for effect, as this is not the messiest of chores…though on occasion a fleck of dried lube or crusting residual cum has been known to pose a threat). I fill the pot with water and set it upon the stove. Turn the knob and hear the click of the gas burner lighting. I set the tongs next to the stovetop. And then, I put on my gloves. Not delicate lace to match my apron (for this tool serves a purpose beyond aesthetic), not matronly oven mitts or clinical rubber gloves---but hot pink, long sleeved, cuffed, latex, water-stop gloves.

I push each finger through, ten fingers filling ten spaces and feel the material stretch over them. As I cuff the sleeves, I think about the model on the packaging. Her glossed-to-match, hot-pink lips were blow-job ready, gesturing over her gloved hands cradling a pile of splooge suds. I, aspiring to look this sexy during housework, paid $5.99 at the Duane Reade around the corner for a pair of my own. I remember selecting the box that read and feeling proud when the

cashier rang me up. My hands aren’t particularly large, but with this purchase I imagined them enlargening to superhuman proportions capable of the greatest of tasks, the dirtiest of dishes, the grimiest of floors, while completely maintaining their feminine softness, their grace, and their not-so-subtle swollen pink hue.

In his 1927 essay, “Fetishism,” Freud theorizes fetishism as an exclusively male “perversion.” It goes a little like this: the little boy has two loves in his life—his penis and his mom.